Event

Climate Change is one of the biggest problem currently faced in the world. It is an unavoidable threat to human development. Signs of global warming have become more obvious in the recent decades. The poor and the underprivileged nations are most likely to suffer the adverse impacts of climate changes since the majority of those communities depend on climate sensitive livelihoods such as agriculture and fisheries.

This changing system of climate further reduces the standards of living of the poor and makes it difficult to achieve the country’s goal of ‘sustainable development’. Hence, priority attention must be given to existing environmental degradation and the impeding threats of climate change as these pose risks to food security and poverty reduction. The Sri Lankan Government has reported to the UNFCC (report 2000) that the climate change would result in irreversible loss and damages to the country. Sri Lanka is experiencing the negative impacts in fishing industry with rising of temperature and also increasing duration and geographic coverage of droughts has impacted in reducing the agricultural production.

Sri Lanka Red Cross Society (SLRCS) has been contributing towards many humanitarian activities with special emphasis on disaster relief, risk reduction and development for more than seventy years. It is also actively involved in addressing the environmental issues such as climate change. It has been observed that, even though considerable efforts have been made both at the policy and programme level to address climate change issues by government and non-government actors, there are limited opportunities to share those good practices among them and interested communities of practice.

In order to fill this gap, the SLRCS is organizing this seminar to bring the practitioners and policy makers together to share and discuss the good practices and strategies for adapting to climate change. This Seminar will help the participants to further develop their capacities and understanding on climate change and disaster risks reduction technologies which will facilitate sharing, replicating and possible scaling-up of these practices. . The recommendations from the Seminar will be documented and disseminated to all levels with the intention of contributing to the ongoing National Adaptation Programme (NAP) process and strengthen community based adaptation (CBA) perspectives. In addition, SLRCS will disseminate a report which includes the proceedings and recommendations of the Seminar and strengthen the discussion for CBA.

For more information, please visit http://www.redcross.lk/seminar/